


The Dying Embers Of The Sun

by hiddenhibernian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coming of Age, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Jealousy, Marauders' Era, Post-Marauders' Era, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 12:45:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16367966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddenhibernian/pseuds/hiddenhibernian
Summary: Marlene finally understood why they fought and laughed and loved with such reckless abandon, Sirius and Lily and James. It wasn’t madness, or that they didn't care; they had just realised that the world was too small to contain all the things they wanted to do. They were running out of time before they had even got started.





	The Dying Embers Of The Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [obscuro_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/obscuro_2018) collection. 



> Thanks ever so much to my fantastic beta lovelyluce (https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelyluce/profile), as always! Any remaining mistakes (or contractions...) are my own. Thanks also to the mods for running the fest, and to the prompter: I've had this story on the go for a long time, and this finally gave me the impetus to finish it off.

It was the silence that made her notice something was wrong.

Marlene burst in through the front door as usual, tossing her scarf and gloves on the floor as she went. The golden afternoon outside followed her into the house, fingers of sunlight painting bright stripes on the orange wallpaper. The door slammed shut and cut off the cold air, but a chill still lingered on her cheeks.

It was only after she had kicked off her boots and checked her floppy fringe in the mirror that Marlene noticed the silence.

Usually, the radio was playing and her mother would sing along in the kitchen if she knew the song. The TV would be on in the studio. Most of the time it was blaring out the news to an empty room, abandoned by her dad, who would be pottering around somewhere else. And Bernie, their dog, would come rushing to welcome Marlene as if she had been away for months rather than just a few hours.

This afternoon, there were no homely sounds at all. 

All she could hear was her own breathing, almost obscene in the absolute stillness. Glancing down on her left hand, she saw that she had drawn her wand without noticing. It was trembling faintly. She glared at her hand, willing it to stop. There was no reason to be afraid: no one could find this house, and the wards had still been up when she came back. Her parents must have popped out for a moment.

The world would have been a lot more comforting if she would been able to believe it.

First things first: a wisp of smoke from her wand grew into a familiar creature. She had only been able to produce her little squirrel for a few weeks. Remus and Marlene had celebrated her achievement with drinks at a dingy Muggle pub in Manchester, and the memory made her eyes sting. She'd been so happy...

Marlene dispatched her Patronus with a nod, and it sprinted off through the wall. Then she started scanning the room, just like Mad-Eye Moody had taught them.

The hall looked like it always did; a jumble of coats flung on the hanger, wizarding and Muggle photos jostling for space, and the olive-green phone perched on a side table next to the most uncomfortable chair in the house. It was her father's way of keeping the phone bill down.

Softly, Marlene opened the door to the kitchen, poking her wand through first before she quietly slipped through. A casserole in the oven filled the room with a comforting smell of thyme, but there was no one there laying the table.

The sound of Marlene swallowing seemed to echo throughout the room.

Before she had time to decide what to do next, there was a muted click from the lounge, and then a whirring sound. 

A few raspy piano chords followed, and a soft, deep voice launched into a song about a soldier and his sweetheart.

The swell of annoyance was so strong it almost got the upper hand on fear. Marlene hated that song. If it hadn't been so popular she would have had a normal name, like Susan or Karen or Linda. Or a wizarding name: Arabella, perhaps.

Or Perdita.

But oh no, her parents had to name their youngest daughter after a stupid song because it reminded them of when they had been courting during the war.

It was an old song, but all her friends' parents seemed to know it – well, the Muggles did anyway, and quite a few of the wizards too. Elphias Doge even had the cheek to whistle the tune whenever he bumped into Marlene at Order meetings. She was much too intimidated by Dumbledore's oldest friend to say anything, and so far her freezing looks didn't have much effect.

It always made Sirius laugh, seeing her fidget when the old dodderer hit the chorus. He would elbow Remus, who would shoot her a sympathetic look, but Remus always looked a little amused too.They probably thought that someone old enough to be in the Order of the Phoenix shouldn't be afraid to do anything, which just showed how much they knew.

They were just boys, really, and she was just a stupid girl who didn't have a clue what she was doing. Marlene swallowed a sob, but then she pushed the hair out of her face and straightened her back. She was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, for all the use it was to her.

“In here, little Marlene. In here,” a soft voice crooned from the sitting room and she almost dropped her wand.

Marlene scrambled to turn around, and then advanced cautiously towards the creature waiting for her. She didn't even consider running away. 

Some things you cannot run away from.

When she saw the bodies on the floor she screamed, but she was still holding on to her wand so hard her knuckles were turning white.

“I'm afraid you're quite late, my dear. Don't worry, there was nothing you could have done, but it was quite touching how they kept saying you weren't coming back. Naughty, but touching.” The voice was light and mocking, but it still made her shiver.

Marlene couldn't seem to look away from Voldemort, although she still knew better than to look into his eyes. It was only when he moved his gaze to the dark splattering on the wallpaper that she managed to tear her eyes away from his wand.

Rays of late-afternoon sunshine stole through the blinds and dyed the still wet stains orange-brown.

“Such an ugly end, don't you think?”

The hem of his robes was drenched. She couldn't seem to look away from the fat drop of almost-congealed blood rolling down his black boot, landing in the little pool by his feet. Marlene knew enough about death and bodily fluids to realise it wasn't natural; that it ought to have congealed. Dark magic didn't care about the rules.

“I'm afraid you're about to join them, little Marlene. No more friends, no family, no pets.” Voldemort kicked all that remained of Bernie, their dog, aside with a sneer.

It was the hardest thing Marlene had ever done, but she managed to raise her chin and look straight into Voldemort’s red eyes. Like an equal. She might be powerless to stop what was going to happen, but she was going to die like a witch, not like an animal – not like poor Bernie.

She shouldn’t have done it: as soon as she met the fire in his red eyes he reached into her mind with the ease of a child plucking a flower, grasping and pulling, rummaging through everything she held dear.

“The blood-traitor Black: what company you keep, my child,” he mumbled mock-chidingly under his breath. Marlene could no sooner stop him from rooting through her memories of Sirius than she could stop her beating heart.

* * *

The first time she saw Sirius was when he jumped onto the Hogwarts Express, leaving the door to the carriage swinging on its hinges behind him. The cold-eyed woman who had accompanied him hissed in admonishment down on the platform. She must have been his mother. 

Sirius ignored her, like he had left his old life behind him already.

“Famous! We’re off to Hogwarts!” he burst out, impervious to the disapproving stare from the tall, blond almost-man who looked like he should be in the Wizarding Assembly Rooms rather than going off to school with the likes of them.

“Move along, Black,” the older student drawled, and the little group of first years who had been hovering in the corridor scrambled into the nearest compartment.

Marlene was beginning to regret insisting on travelling on the train. Her mother had eventually allowed her to go down to London just to get the train back up to Scotland, even though she couldn't understand why it was so important to her daughter. She had only relented when Marlene had burst into tears, pleading her case.

Marlene was desperate not to start off on the wrong foot. What if she missed something – what if all the other children made friends on the train, and it was too late when she arrived at Hogwarts?

It didn't matter in the end. She didn't make any friends on the train, anyway.

She was sorted in Gryffindor – which was a relief given that she wasn't clever enough for Ravenclaw, or sufficiently pure-blooded for Slytherin – but even afterwards, Marlene always seemed to have one foot outside the door and one on the inside. 

Maybe Hufflepuff would have been easier, she thought gloomily as she watched the other Gryffindors pair up.

From the first week at Hogwarts, it was patently obvious that Sirius, James and Peter would be inseparable. Towards the end of the term, Remus had joined their group too. The rest of the Gryffindor first years were allowed to join in sometimes, but none of them had any illusions about their role. They were there to laugh at the jokes, nothing else.

Marlene had never got on with girls; she never understood what they were laughing at. There were always Lily Evans and Mary MacDonald, of course – they didn't have much truck with giggling either. Still, Marlene may as well have made friends with Dumbledore.

There was a sharpness about Lily, something that put Marlene on her guard. Lily didn’t suffer fools easily. Once she had established herself at Hogwarts, her early eagerness to make friends faded, and she snapped at those slow to grasp Transfiguration and social niceties, like Marlene. Still, sometimes, Lily would surprise people with a sudden kindness. One came away slightly dazed from the experience, willing to swear that Lily Evans had a good heart, even if she could be a little abrupt at times.

Mary also had the same ethereal quality of being _more_ in Marlene’s eyes; braver, more intelligent and wittier than Marlene could ever aspire to be. It was only fitting that she was Lily’s closest friend.

Marlene stuck to her own kind: Agatha Carter and Lucy Williams, Gideon Prewett and Aidan Connelly. All of them seemed to be slightly surprised to have been sorted in Gryffindor at the start, but as the novelty wore off, it started to make sense.

There was not enough dazzling brilliance for all of them. Some students were simply more Gryffindor than others. At the most, Marlene was allowed to be part of the sprawling bustle in their common room, an eager spectator to James and Sirius’ antics.

At least she was _there_.

* * *

Years later, Marlene joined the Order to _show_ them. She wasn't quite sure what it was she wanted to show, or to whom: it was a mingled lump of resentment and eagerness to finally be a proper Gryffindor and a vague sentiment that she ought to join up, just like her Dad had done back in the Forties.

When Remus brought her in, Dumbledore had cast a quick look at her and nodded. 

That had been it, the entire initiation process.

After her first Order meeting, she understood the reason for it. Five Order members had been killed in the last month, and three had disappeared. Another two had fled the country, according to Mundungus Fletcher, who tried to come on to her afterwards. Marlene dispatched him with a Stinging Hex, but she couldn't help wondering what she signed up to.

Sirius and James didn't help. They looked like they had joined an adult version of the Gryffindor common room, boasting of how they brought down three Death Eaters with only one wand between them. Lily was looking exasperated and proud in equal measures, just like she had in seventh year when James finally won her over.

They didn't seem to understand they could all be killed – one botched spell, one wrong decision, and that would be it. This time, Dumbledore wouldn't give them a scold and take some house points off.

Marlene didn't understand until much later how wrong she was; how little she understood about Sirius, despite being quite willing to cut off her little finger if he would only as much as look at her.

If she could have loved Remus instead, it would have worked out much better for her. He was a much nicer person than Sirius, to start with.

It took Marlene the better part of a decade to realise that Sirius would never love any woman as much as he loved his friends. Remus, on the other hand, with his tattered clothes and terrible secret, had a heart big enough to love all the people who would let him.

Of course, Marlene knew what took him away every full moon. She wasn't completely stupid, and she had been keeping a diary since long before Hogwarts. It wasn't difficult to figure out, not once she noticed he missed all the full moon Astronomy classes.

Sirius and James always thought they were cleverer than everyone else, so once she started eavesdropping on them it was easy to figure they were in on it, too. Peter would try to hush them while Remus looked both excited and uncomfortable. It wasn't just about Remus being a werewolf: there was something else, and all four of them were in on it.

Marlene had always wondered what 'it' was, exactly, but Remus deserved to have some friends who kept his secrets for him, so she never asked.

Remus was nice, and if he would have had a tenth of Sirius' charm, he would have been able to pick and choose between the witches in their year instead of being snogged by Lily Evans whenever she particularly wanted to annoy James.

Sirius Black, however, never did anything by half-measures. One moment he would be elated, and half an hour later he would look like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

He seemed to have decided that Remus had enough common sense for the two of them in first year, so after that he never bothered to think anything through.

When his family threw him out he was the talk of Hogwarts: any number of girls would have done quite a lot to comfort poor Sirius, all alone in the world. Sirius genuinely didn't seem to care more than he would have if Gryffindor had lost at Quidditch. There was none of the nervous energy and wild fancies he had when something really got to him, just a shrug and a careless toss of his long hair.

It took Marlene years to understand that to Sirius, it was all the same. With being a Black came a certain kind of arrogance, as present in him as it was in his cousins. They were not normal people, and they did not expect normal things like loving parents or taking a boring job to pay the bills or going to Bognor Regis on their summer holidays.

To be born a Black was to be born extraordinary.

They seemed to accept it as a matter of course, Sirius and Bellatrix and Andromeda and Narcissa alike, taking being cast off by their families or being bequeathed a stable full of winged horses in their stride.

It was partly that unshakeable confidence in his own ability to carry anything off that made Sirius stand out. Much later, it dawned on Marlene that it came with the certainty that bad things would happen to him. The shadow of the House of Black ensured Sirius never lived under the illusion that bad things only happened to bad people (of course, the definition of 'bad' was rather fluid in their particular household).

Marlene’s half-blood parents favoured the Muggle world, so she didn't take much notice of the war until she was forced to.

It wasn't until she was sixteen that it was brought home to her that the walls of Hogwarts couldn't protect them forever. Marlene had run up to the dorm to set down her book bag before going down for dinner, and made so much noise throwing the door open that she didn't hear the sobs until she was on her way out.

It was Lily who was crying, and when she didn't immediately order Marlene to bugger off and leave her alone, it was obvious that this time, the cause of her tears wasn't James doing something idiotic.

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Marlene listened to Lily's disjointed account of what had happened to her parents. They had been discovered near Diagon Alley, and for some reason, what upset Lily the most was that they might have gone there trying to get in touch with her.

“I'm going to join the Order,” she told Marlene, and her tear-streaked face looked so determined that Marlene didn't doubt her for a second, even though she wasn't even of age yet.

That last year at school, the mood changed. Outside, the world was waiting for them. Rivalries that had been concerned with Quidditch and house points took on a darker tint, hinting of allegiances to come. Avery and Mulciber and Snape in Slytherin stalked the corridors, and there was trouble whenever they ran into the bolshier Gryffindors. 

Marlene would slink aside if she saw them approach, but once she found herself cornered by Avery and Snape. 

She only escaped because Professor McGonagall happened to pass by.

The memory of Snape's dark, glittering eyes as he pointed the business end of his wand at her made Marlene wake up in a cold sweat several nights in a row. There had been something merciless in his face – a contempt for anyone weaker than him, perhaps – that made him seem much older than seventeen.

For the first time, she worried more about what she was going to face outside Hogwarts than the prospect of not seeing Sirius every day.

* * *

“Marlene! I'm so glad to see you!” Lily finally noticed who was standing behind the counter at Fortescue's when she was about to hand over two Knut for her vanilla and pumpkin ice cream.

Marlene forced a smile in return. “Lily! Congratulations!” She didn't specify whether she referred to the sparkling rings on Lily's pale, elegant finger or her rounded belly, and Lily didn't seem to care which.

They exchanged news and gossip about their classmates before Lily had to rush off to meet her mother-in-law for lunch, and Marlene was left staring at her shiny ice cream counter in disgust.

Not even a rather rushed marriage had seemed to put a dent in Lily's ability to get exactly what she wanted in life, unlike Marlene with her rubbish job and no boyfriend. The Ministry wanted at least five NEWTs with an 'Acceptable', unless you wanted to work in the Department for Magical Maintenance for the rest of your life. Or push around the tea trolley.

Marlene had only managed to get four NEWTs, even if she did get an Exceeds Expectations in Transfiguration. Unlike the Potters, her parents didn't know fusty, old wizards all over Britain. They couldn't shake out an apprenticeship for their daughter at the drop of a hat, and they weren't too keen on supporting her until she found one on her own either.

Marlene was stuck serving ice cream until something better turned up.

The worst had been the glow on Lily's face, and how nice she had been. In Marlene's experience, Lily was only that sweet when someone looked like they needed it.

The next time they met was at Rachel Fenwick's funeral. Her brother Benjy had been in the same year as them at Hogwarts, and in a show of unspoken solidarity most of his contemporaries who hadn't joined Snape and his ilk turned up for the funeral.

Marlene was fidgeting, trying to pull down her too-short black dress, while Lily and James whispered softly to each other behind her. Peter was sitting on Marlene's right hand side, red-faced and uncomfortable in his wrinkled shirt and tie. Sirius, who probably didn't even know what an iron was, sat on the other side of him. His profile was grim, and he didn't take his eyes off the coffin once.

When the ceremony was over and they rose among a cacophony of scraping chairs and rustling robes, Marlene ruthlessly pushed Peter out of the way to get to Sirius.

“Marlene, how are you? It's nice to see you,” he said, but he didn't look at her. The way he was poised, wand hidden beneath his cloak and his legs spread apart, made it look like he would burst into action at any moment. His face seemed different: Sirius had always been good-looking, but now there was a sense of purpose in his every move. 

He was devastatingly beautiful.

James, his arm wrapped around Lily's once-again slim waist, cocked his head to Sirius and Peter, and they left the room together. Marlene was left staring after him when he walked off in the middle of their somewhat desultory conversation. 

Even to her inexperienced eyes, there was something military in the way the small group moved in formation, pushing through the mix of young people barely out of Hogwarts and Bridget Fenwick's Ministry colleagues. If you looked closely, they all had their wands out. Peter and Lily were covering the flanks, moving their heads ever so slightly as they continuously scanned the crowd. They moved with purpose; even Peter seemed to have acquired a certain gravitas.

Marlene had never felt more alien to them as she dropped her book of hymns, causing the fat witch behind her to tut under her breath.

* * *

Being in the Order of the Phoenix mostly seemed to entail sneaking around dusty, deserted old buildings, if Marlene's first weeks were anything to go by.

She was dispatched on recognisance missions with Remus, who patiently taught her detection spells and wards far beyond the Hogwarts curriculum. He never complained about being stuck with her, not even when Sirius and Peter came back with the hems of their robes singed from the ambush they had walked into.

They told their story with wide gestures, laughing slightly too loud at the funny parts. It was the first time Marlene came across the nervous energy that came with being alive when you thought you were going to die for sure.

During her fourth week in the Order, she got her own taste of it.

The old barn they had been dispatched to was surrounded by rolling fields, turned into gold by the light of the setting sun. The stone walls still held the midday heat, and Marlene leaned her back against the rough surface to let the warmth settle in her bones. Too many summer days had been drab and grey this year. There didn't seem to be any Dementors down here in Somerset.

Not yet.

“What are we doing here, then?” She tried to sound nonchalant. Absolutely nothing had happened during their previous excursions, so it wasn't very difficult.

“We're checking for Death Eater activity,” Remus said patiently – as if that wasn't what they had been doing for the better part of this month – while pointing his wand at the barn wall at an odd angle. He was humming, but didn't deign to tell her why.

Marlene was counting the number of times the lark had been back to her nest to feed her peeping chicks – five – as Remus did something complicated to the cornerstone at the far side of the walls. A tractor was labouring its way across a field on the other side of the hedge, but there had been no other sign of life since their arrival.

Marlene was about to complain about the lack of toilet facilities again when everything seemed to happen at once.

Several loud cracks announced the arrival of wizards.There was a loud scream in the background, but it was cut off abruptly. Several figures in black robes surrounded them, wands drawn, and Marlene couldn't think of anything to do except staring at them, like a rabbit caught in headlights.

“Quick!”

Remus grabbed her around the waist and dragged her around the corner of the barn, where he flung her aside with surprising strength. He had his wand out, and hit the first Death Eater to peer around the corner with a satisfying thud.

By then, Marlene had recovered some of her wits and was covering their other flank. Her heart was drumming so loudly in her ears that she could hardly think, but when there was a flicker of movement, she had her Shield charm up before she was hit.

“We have to get out of here,” Remus said in the same voice as if he was asking her to pass the milk. For the first time it occurred to Marlene that the reason he had been assigned to babysit her wasn't his endless supply of patience as much as his fighting abilities.

“How are we supposed to do that, then?” she asked, trying to sound as unconcerned as him but only managing breathless.

“Put your arm around my waist.” Remus pursed his lips thoughtfully and mumbled something as he looked up at the roof, while Marlene inched closer. She threw a Body-Bind Curse at another Death Eater who was trying to corner again, and missed narrowly.

“Ready?” he breathed into her ear, and she nodded.

In one smooth movement he tossed something over the roof. There was a loud bang on the other side, followed by muffled curses. Remus swiftly swung them around with his wand out, muttering detection spells too quickly for her to follow.

Suddenly they were on top of the roof, and Marlene only had time to spot two separate groups of dark cloaks advancing on their former position before they Disapparated away from the golden fields.

* * *

“Peter discovered a gap in their Disapparition wards last week,” Remus explained as they appeared in a dark alley somewhere in London, their designated emergency return spot. “I just had to distract them so we could slip away upwards.”

“But what did you do?” Marlene asked stupidly. She seemed to have left her stomach behind in Somerset.

“I threw a Dungbomb at them. It hit the tall one, the one who looked like Lucius Malfoy. Dungbombs tend to get people's attention, especially if they’re particular about their clothes.” His eyes were sparkling and his cheeks flushed, but she saw that his hands were completely steady as he pushed his wand up his shirt sleeve.

Quickly, Marlene did the same and patted down her hair. They turned around a corner and joined the Muggle crowd, looking just like them. Despite her efforts to fit in Marlene's giddiness spilled over: she couldn't help giggling. Soon they were laughing so much they were almost bending over.

“They'll be- They'll be scraping dung out of their robes for weeks!” Remus choked out between fits of laughter, and it set Marlene off again. 

Even when they had reached Headquarters and Mad-Eye Moody had debriefed them, the odd giggle escaped from Marlene, although Remus had reverted to his usual sober demeanour at Order meetings. He had been perfecting the art of appearing responsible through years of prefect meetings at Hogwarts, so it was hardly surprising that he was better at it than she was.

Afterwards, Marlene wondered if Mad-Eye had been waiting for something to go wrong, to find out if she could keep her head in a crisis. Quite soon, she was sent out on real missions with Lily or the Prewetts, and she only bumped into Remus at Headquarters or at Order meetings.

It got easier, and harder. Easier, because the spells she had once approached with trepidation became second nature, and she got used to scanning her environment and never leaving her back open to attack.

Harder, because when one could die every time one went out on a mission, death was always lurking in the corner of one’s mind. At Order meetings, Marlene looked at her old school friends and wondered who would be next. Or who would crack and run away to France, like Lucinda Abbott after a particularly bad week.

A month into it, Marlene got stuck staring at her slice of toast at the breakfast table until it went cold.

It was the same breakfast she had eaten every morning since before she'd gone to Hogwarts: a slice of toast and porridge with a bit of butter. Suddenly, it seemed very odd that she still was eating the same thing, while everything else had changed.

Or had it?

Her father was the same as always across the table, hidden behind his newspaper with his eggs forgotten beneath it.

Nominally, she still worked at the ice cream parlour, although she had left Mr Fortesque in the lurch more times than she had thought any employee could do before they got fired. He never took her to task; Marlene suspected Dumbledore or someone else from the Order had an understanding with him.

Despite her irregular absences, her parents never asked any questions either. Marlene suspected they knew too. They had never remarked on the mud-stained clothes she brought back from missions (what was it that attracted Death Eaters to the countryside, when they would have been just as well off meeting somewhere civilised?) or seemed to notice the new scars that appeared, one after the other.

Even Marlene could see that her eyes looked different now – more guarded, more like Sirius' and the others' had looked that day at the funeral – but they hadn't said anything about that either. The war was simply never mentioned in their house.

Except the day shortly after Marlene had joined the order, when her mother briskly explained that their house had been made Unplottable. For the first time, Marlene wondered if her mother really registered Crup-breeding licences and other permits required to keep magical creatures, or if her job at the Ministry of Magic was quite different than what she had been told all her life.

The Order of the Phoenix wasn't precisely a secret society, but you weren't exactly encouraged to talk about it. Mad-Eye had made that quite clear. Marlene was beginning to realise that the Order, just like the Death Eaters, was present through the whole wizarding world. It should have been comforting not to be alone, but somehow it made the war seem like it was overshadowing everything else.

It had been easier to pretend everything was all right when she had been scooping out ice cream all day.

* * *

“What happened to you? You look like you've seen a ghost. Did old Wrigglypants get his hands on you?” Sirius came swinging through the double doors to what used to be the kitchen in the old gentlemen's club they had been temporarily headquartered in.

“Wrigglesworth,” Marlene corrected. The ghost of the last butler on the premises was rather too fond of passing through the younger female order members. It got old quick.

“I don't give a rat's arse what he calls himself. He's a lecherous old sod, whatever his name is.”

“You're one to talk.” She managed to dredge up a smile from somewhere. On any other day, she'd rather have walked into Wrigglesworth of her own free will than making a joke about Sirius' love life – wasn't it ridiculous that she still cared? – but not today.

Today, the familiar sensation of jealousy burning in her throat would have been welcome.

“Hey, you won't hear any complaints about me.” Sirius held his hands up, the glittering smile fading as he took in the expression on her face.

Marlene had no idea what she looked like. She felt numb all over, and if she hadn't made a conscious effort to hold on to her wand, it would have clattered to the floor.

“Here, sit down.” He pushed her towards the telephone booth next to the cloakroom, and he pulled her down so she was sitting next to him on the hard bench. The were wedged so closely together in the narrow room, not much larger than a broom closet, that their legs were touching.

“Talk to me,” he demanded in his usual imperious way. There was nothing usual about the way he was scrutinising her with his suddenly keen eyes.

Marlene didn't care. “I don't want to talk about it,” she said. By rights it should have come out sullenly, the complaint of misunderstood teenagers everywhere, but even she could hear the flatness in her voice.

“Well, you will talk about it to me, so you'd better resign yourself to it.” Sirius tapped his wand and suddenly he was holding a bottle of something amber-coloured. “It's not healthy to bottle these things up.”

“Like you'd know,” Marlene mumbled, but he ignored her and swigged back a long swallow.

“Cheers,” he said when he had stopped coughing. “Your turn.”

Tiredly, Marlene drank from the bottle Sirius pressed into her cold hand. The heat from the whisky shot right through her, burning a path down her throat and making her fingers tingle.

They stared at the list of useful telephone numbers penned decades ago, when gentlemen still wore hats and required the services of a tailor, passing the bottle between them occasionally in silence.

Marlene should have known it was too good to last.

“What happened? Is Rutherford dead?” Sirius couldn't be tactful to save his life.

“No. He's reporting to Mad-Eye now.” His eyebrows had been singed off, but otherwise he was in the same condition as when she had met him this morning.

“What, then?”

Marlene knocked back another mouthful of whisky. This Muggle stuff must be stronger than it seemed; the words slipped out of her without intention.

“They were waiting for us when we got there. Snape was one of them.”

Sirius' face contorted in rage, and fortunately, the mention of his most hated adversary distracted him from asking why she was so sure she had recognised him. Marlene would rather not tell him she still had nightmares about Snape's cold, dark eyes staring down at her from Hogwarts.

“One day...” he muttered darkly, and the look of fierce intent on his face almost convinced Marlene that he would be able to take down Snape if it came to it. She couldn't bear it if Snape...

Shying away from the thought, rehashing the events of this afternoon seemed like an appealing prospect for the first time.

“We fought them, of course.” After several months in the Order, Marlene was a decent fighter. Not half as good as Remus, of course, whose thinking seemed to speed up instead of slow down when he was under fire. And even if she spent the rest of her life fighting Death Eaters, she would never get Sirius' ability to counter the Dark Arts. He had been born to it, in a twisted way.

She had found out that she was capable enough, though, which was a pleasant surprise after her undistinguished career at Hogwarts.

Marlene suspected that coasting through school had left some people – Lily – unfamiliar with having to work hard to grasp something. Not so for her: Marlene didn't expect things to come easy, so she had no problem practising the same spells over and over again until she got them.

She told Sirius they had ducked and run through the sleepy village, heedless of any Muggles who had the misfortune to peer out their windows at the wrong time.

“They must have thought they'd catch us easily, because they didn't bother about reinforcements.” The Death Eaters had also probably been oblivious to the fact that Rutherford was a master at camouflage spells.

Once they shook off their followers among the narrow alleyways and outbuildings and had a few seconds to regroup, he pointed Marlene to a chestnut tree with a branch overhanging the lane. She obediently scrambled up, and Rutherford had just enough time to scarper before urgent whispers heralded the arrival of their adversaries. Marlene glanced down on her arm and discovered that it was indistinguishable from the furrowed bark beneath it.

Nevertheless, she fervently hoped Snape wasn't one of the Death Eaters gingerly advancing beneath her. She held as still as she could, trying not to breathe as they passed under the chestnut tree without a glance upwards. Even if she couldn't see it, she knew that her wand was trembling.

Afterwards, she wasn't sure when it struck her that it wasn't quite enough to be hiding in the trees, satisfied with evading detection. If that was all the Order did, the other side would win soon. Voldemort would be running Britain, and hiding would be no use at all.

She had known this day would come. It was just that she thought she would be different somehow.

Marlene of the Order of the Phoenix ought to be different to plain old Marlene McKinnon, able to kill a man in cold blood without shivering so much she almost fell off her branch.

She forced her wand hand downwards, and cowardly closed her eyes as she muttered the spell.

* * *

Rutherford found her laughing beneath the chestnut tree. She didn't even hear him approach, and he had to slap her to get her back to her senses. Fortunately, he had already disposed of the remaining Death Eaters or they may not have made it out of there.

Sirius didn't look at her when she finished her story. It was a relief not to have to field his searching gaze anymore.

“There's some steel to you, Marlene McKinnon.”

It was the last thing she expected him to say, and she half-turned towards him, the empty bottle dangling from her hands.

“I'm serious.” His eyes shone with the intensity that belonged to Sirius alone. “It's bloody well done for someone who used to serve up ice cream all day.”

“I still do,” she reminded him, and he brushed it aside with one of his slightly too wide arm gestures. It knocked the bottle to the floor where it rolled to rest against the threshold to the booth.

“It's not an easy thing to do, to kill someone for the first time,” he told her, sounding more subdued than she had ever heard him. “Not when you're a decent person. It's different for them,” he spat out the word and Marlene wasn't sure whether he meant the Death Eaters or the rest of the Blacks, or maybe all of them, “but for you – You're very brave.”

If Marlene had been asked to describe the most unlikely way this day would end, being told she was brave by Sirius would have featured near the top of the list. Of course it would happen when she was too numb to care.

“Oh, there you are.” Remus opened the door and peered in at them. “I thought I heard something. Sirius, is that my bottle of Laphroaig?”

While Sirius was trying to explain to Remus why the whole, apparently very expensive bottle of whisky he had bought only that morning was gone, Marlene slipped away.

* * *

Something changed between them that day.

It wasn't the change she daydreamed of when she was younger: that Sirius suddenly would see her, as if they were meeting for the first time, and finally realise that she was everything he had ever wanted in a girl. That wasn't likely to happen, was it?

It was something else. Suddenly, she was on the inside of that tense formation she had seen from the outside at the funeral.

One of them.

Apparently, killing a man had been enough to bring about what seven years in the same house and a vow to serve the Order of the Phoenix had been unable to achieve. If she had known that in sixth year, Mulciber might not have got off with a stinging hex that time in DADA.

Be careful what you wish for, she remembered her mum saying once.

Marlene still didn't have exactly what she had wished for, of course. It was pretty darn near it though, being friends with Sirius and his little gang – and Lily, of course.

It was just that it was different when you were on the inside. They weren't at school anymore.

For the first time, Marlene wondered how long Sirius had planned on joining the Order before he did. When he had been thrown out by his parents? Or had it been from when he was sorted in Gryffindor? Perhaps it wasn't so strange that Sirius never had cared much about the usual dilemmas of growing up, not when he'd had _that_ ahead of him.

Marlene finally understood why they fucked and laughed and loved with such reckless abandon, Sirius and Lily and James. It wasn’t madness, or that they didn't care: they had just realised that the world was too small to contain all the things they wanted to do.

There wasn’t enough time. A few short years would have to make do for everything they wanted to cram into a lifetime, and it left one a little mad trying to feel and be everything at once.

Three years ago, Marlene would have given her right arm to obtain Lily’s unconscious elegance, the exquisite turn of her head that drew people towards her without her even noticing. Now, she couldn’t give two hoots about it: that was Lily, who was nothing like Marlene and never would be. Marlene was perfect in her own way, which had nothing to do with deep green eyes and a smooth white throat and a steady hand at charms.

Marlene almost felt sick she had wasted so much time being jealous of Lily and James: envying the way he would look at her when she was talking to someone else as if he didn't quite believe she could be with someone like him, or the way they always seemed to know where the other one was in a room full of people.

Once, not so long ago, the way Lily constantly twisted and turned her wedding ring had set Marlene's teeth on edge. Now, she couldn't believe how stupid she had been to begrudge them their happiness. It was the only thing that made the war worthwhile, knowing there was some goodness in the world...

* * *

Abruptly, Marlene was hurled out of her memories and returned to the sun-drenched sitting room. It seemed to have gone colder, and she could feel the hum of magic from the figure before her, threatening to engulf her. Her own wand was little defence in the face of all that power, but she doggedly clung on to it.

“Where are Lily and James Potter?” The mocking tone was gone.

“I- I don't know,” Marlene forced out between her chattering teeth.

“It's pointless to lie to me. Travers used rather cruder methods than I, but he got everything he could out of your parents earlier.” Voldemort nudged her mother's curly hair aside with a booted foot. “Of course they didn't know anything. It's you I've been waiting for. _Where are the Potters_?”

“I don't know!” She avoided his eyes this time, but she still saw his eyebrows rise in disbelief. “I don't, and even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you!”

The light tone was back: “Aren't you noble, little Marlene? Don't think for a second they would return the favour. They care nothing for you, no matter how much you would like them to.”

Marlene had told herself the same thing hundreds of times over the years. If he was trying to shock her into compliance, he had picked the wrong way.

“They do. But it doesn't matter: even if they didn't, I'd still care about them,” she said calmly, or as calmly as you ever could when staring into the face of someone who used to be human.

“Fool!” Voldemort sneered, and it was almost as if she had hit a nerve. “Willing to throw your life away for the illusion of friendship! Or is it love? Do you think the blood traitor Black would mourn for you? Think again: he'll have bedded half of Britain by this time next year, if he lives that long!”

“It doesn't matter,” Marlene repeated. It seemed so simple now. “That's why we'll win, eventually: because we're willing to give our own lives for our friends. Your Death Eaters are only in it for themselves.” She remembered looking into the cold eyes of Severus Snape, devoid of any love or compassion. It wasn't love that tied him to his precious Dark Lord.

Voldemort raised his wand, and Marlene almost burst out laughing as she realised she would end up dying for Lily Evans and she didn't even mind.

The moment seemed to stretch out and fill the whole world with the golden sunshine, the stillness, and the ugly black wand pointed at her.

He would rummage through her mind again, and when he didn't find what he was looking for he was going to kill her. Marlene hoped it would be quick. The Order would be on their way, but what could the few wizards on duty at headquarters do against Voldemort?

Better they got there too late.

She smiled and dove into his red eyes, drowning in the fire burning there.

* * *

For a fleeting moment she thought she heard Sirius' voice.

“Marlene? Marlene, please-”

There was a featherlight softness on her face, as if someone swept her fringe away, and she thought she could smell Sirius – cigarette smoke, leather and a faint trace of dog.

Home.

The thought flickered, and then she was leaving. She was needed somewhere else. Not even James's voice, sounding more upset than she had ever heard him, demanding that someone would _do_ something, could hold her back.

Marlene fell head first into the silence, glowing in the light of the setting sun.

****

THE END


End file.
